A Great Read For a New Year

Kerry Egan has written a book that only she could write, combining her study at Harvard Divinity School, her years of experience as a hospice chaplain, and several unfortunate years prior, during which her life was hijacked by post-partum psychosis, caused by a reaction to anesthesia used during an emergency C-section. For much of her child’s early life, Egan was incapacitated. After years of medication and treatment, when she eventually got her life back, she was irreversibly altered, and carried shame about her mental illness. This led to her rare capacity for compassion, and informed the work she would later do as a hospice chaplain.

In the first chapter, Egan says, “…hospice chaplains are sort of the opposite of storytellers. We’re story holders.”